Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Q & A in Charleston, West Virginia
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A at a Coffee with Community Leaders in Charleston, West Virginia
The Grill
Charleston, West Virginia
October 18, 2004

10:58 A.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we're -- want to thank everybody for
being here this morning. What we do at these events -- it's a chance
just to sit down and have a conversation. I usually lead off with some
thoughts, and then we open it put to questions. It's a little
different than your basic conversation because the press are with us,
of course. But we don't hold that against them. But you just need to
know whatever you say is going to be broadcast or recorded, so I like
to warn people when they're on the record. It's a cautionary note that
some of my colleagues in the Congress and government often forget at
their peril.

But what I thought I might do this morning is I want to talk a
little bit about -- specifically about the war on terror because I
think that's so important in terms of the decisions we're going to make
as a nation going forward, and the decision we're going to make on
November 2nd when we pick our Commander-in-Chief, in effect, for the
next four years. But I don't want to restrict the conversation to
that. By focusing on that at the outset, I don't mean to discourage
discussion about other issues. There are a lot of things we could talk
about obviously in West Virginia and all across the country. And we
usually get into a lot of other issues, health care, or energy, or the
economy, or so many -- education, so many other issues that are out
there that we're talking about, debating this year. But let me begin,
first of all, by talking about, as I say, where I think we are on the
war on terror.

I think you can look back in American history and find there have
been certain times when we were confronted with new threats, and we had
to sort of reorganize our thinking, and our approach to national
security issues. Think about the period right after World War II,
after we'd won a tremendous victory in Europe and the Pacific, and then
suddenly were faced with the Cold War, and the specter of the Soviet
Union that was nuclear-armed, that had occupied half of Europe, and
that was a major global threat to the United States. And we had to put
in place a brand new strategy, which we did in the late '40s and early
'50s. We created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We created
the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency, and
reorganized our military, and so forth -- put in place a strategy that
worked for about the next 40 years, that was supported by Republican
and Democratic administration alike, right through until the end of the
Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Now, I think as a result of 9/11, we're again in one of those
periods when we need to put together -- and have put together -- a new
national security strategy going forward to defend against that new
threat, that the strategies that we had for the Cold War don't really
work when you talk about al Qaeda, the kind of threat that we're faced
with now.

What we learned coming out of 9/11 is that we're very vulnerable
because we are an open society. It's one of our great strengths, the
free movement of goods and ideas and people back and forth across
international borders, and a society that values to the maximum extent
possible individual freedom and liberty and the fewest restraints
possible, that that -- all of those are strengths as a society, but
they also obviously are potential vulnerabilities from the standpoint
of terrorists that we experience on 9/11.

We learned on that date, the worst attack ever on American soil, we
lost more people that day than we lost at Pearl Harbor, that the
terrorists were also seriously interested in trying to acquire weapons
of mass destruction, to get their hands on deadlier weapons to use
against us -- and whether that was chemical or a biological agent, or
even a nuclear weapon; and that the ultimate threat we face today is
the possibility of terrorists in the midst of one of our own cities
with that kind of deadly capability that would threaten the lives not
just of a few thousands of us, but hundreds of thousands of Americans.
And that's what we have to be prepared to defeat and to guard against.

The President made some very important decisions in the -- on 9/11
itself and in the immediate aftermath. Obviously, we moved
aggressively to strengthen our defenses here at home. We created the
Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot Act that gave law
enforcement additional tools to be able to prosecute potential
terrorists; went after and created a thing called Project BioShield
that allows the FDA and the National Institutes of Health to do a
better job of developing defenses against a possible attack with
biological weapons, a series of steps that I think most people are
familiar with that make the U.S. a much tougher target than we were
prior to 9/11.

But we also made another decision, and that was that there's no
such thing as a perfect defense, that given the nature of the threat,
you could be right 99 times out of a hundred, or 999 out of a thousand,
that one chance that they could get through with that kind of
devastating attacks means that you cannot rely just on defense and call
it a day. You can't retreat behind our oceans -- they would put up the
barriers and they can't get at us because we know they're out there
trying. And we know they're trying hard to get their hands on deadlier
weapons, and that sooner or later if all we do is rely on defense, they
may well get through.

So the President made the decision that we also have to go on
offense, which I think is absolutely the right decision. But that
meant to use the full power of the United States to go after the
terrorists wherever they reside, wherever we can find them planning,
plotting training, getting organized. It also meant -- and this was a
major departure -- that we would use the force of the United States to
confront and hold to account those who supported terror, the states
that sponsored terror that provided a sanctuary or safe harbor for the
terrorists, provided them with training or weapons or finances would be
held accountable for the actions of the terrorists just as the
terrorists themselves would be held accountable. That was a major new
departure. But I think absolutely the right decision.

Based on that set of propositions, we obviously then moved into
Afghanistan, took down the Taliban, closed the training camps. There
were camps there that had trained an estimated 20,000 terrorists in the
late '90s -- some of whom had attacked the U.S. on 9/11; some of whom
have since attacked elsewhere around the world. We also captured and
killed hundreds of al Qaeda, and are now in the business of standing up
a new government to replace the old one we took down. That's a very
important sort of fourth step, if you will. And it's absolutely
essential after we've done what we had to do in Afghanistan -- to close
down the training camps and go after al Qaeda and the folks that hit us
on 9/11, that you can't just turn your back and walk away. You've got
to put something in its place, otherwise all you'll have is a failed
state that will soon again become a breeding ground for terror.

And so we've moved aggressively to stand up a democratically
elected government in Afghanistan. And we're making significant
progress -- a lot hand-wringing along the way. There were a lot of
people, including John Edwards, the guy who is my opponent six months
after we went into Afghanistan was saying, well, it has all turned to
chaos, that the Taliban are back in control, this is never going to
work. That was two-and-a-half years ago. Well, it is working. We
registered 10 million Afghans, almost half of them women. And a week
ago Saturday, for the first time in the 5,000-year history of
Afghanistan, there were free nationwide elections. They've got a
constitution they've written. They've got an interim President in
Hamid Karzai. They're counting the votes now. By the end of the year,
there will be a democratically elected government in Afghanistan for
the first time in history, and the world will be safer for it. It's a
major accomplishment. There's still a lot of work to be done. Nobody
should assume that it's all going to go smoothly, or that there won't
be hard days ahead. There will be. The terrorists, the Taliban, the
al Qaeda know if we're successful in establishing a democratically
elected government in Afghanistan, their day is over in Afghanistan.
But we're making significant progress.

The other thing we're doing is standing up, training an Afghan
national army that will be able to provide for their own security. And
once that's done, then we can obviously reduce our own role in
Afghanistan. And we don't want to stay any longer than is absolutely
necessary, but we want to stay long enough to get the job done.

If you move on over to Iraq now and look at that, a somewhat
different set of circumstances, but still a situation in which we had
in Saddam Hussein a man who'd started two wars previously, a man who
had produced and used chemical weapons against his own people and
against the Iranians and had other robust WMD programs, obviously, back
at the time of the Gulf War, a man who had traditionally been a sponsor
of terror. Iraq has been carried on the State Department's state
sponsor of terror list for 15 years. He provided a home to Abu Nidal,
to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He made $25,000 payments to the
families of suicide bombers who would kill Israelis, had a relationship
with al Qaeda. You can go look at testimony by George Tenet, director
of the CIA, two years ago before the Senate foreign relations committee
in open session where he talks about a 10-year relationship between
Iraq and al Qaeda.

After we took down the government there, obviously, which we
accomplished I think in good order, we're now in the midst of standing
up a democratically elected government in place of the old Saddam
Hussein regime. Hard thing to do. I don't want to underestimate how
difficult this is, but it's absolutely essential that we do it. We now
have an Iraqi government in place, an interim government that took over
in June. We've got the National Council has been established and
assembled for the first time. They're going to have elections in
January. The group elected in January will write a constitution, and
there will be a democratically elected government in place, in Iraq
hopefully by the end of next year. As I say, January is the target for
the first round of elections -- very, very important that we complete
that task.

And we're also, at the same time in Iraq, working aggressively to
stand up armed forces, police, border patrol, all of the security
elements you need to guarantee the security of the nation. And that
effort will have in place by the end of January -- the target is to
have 145,000 trained and armed Iraqis, continue to build that through
the course of next year so that they can get into the fight and
increasingly take on more responsibility for themselves. And they are
in the fight now. They are actively involved all around the country,
side-by-side with our forces in many places.

That's the ultimate objective. That's the strategy we've got to
pursue we believe. And we're confident that if we can accomplish what
we've set out to accomplish in Afghanistan and Iraq, that it will
fundamentally transform that part of the world, demonstrate clearly
that there's an alternative to the oppression and the extremism, if you
will, and the dictatorships that have oftentimes governed in that part
of the world in the past, and been so much of a problem for us. And
it's essential we get it done so that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan
ever again becomes a breeding ground for terror, or a place where
people develop and use weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq was of special concern because again remembering back to what
we think is the biggest threat we now face, the terrorist armed with a
deadly weapon in the middle of one of our cities, Iraq was the place
where there was most likely to be a nexus, if you will, between the
terrorists on the one hand and WMD on the other -- because of the
history of the regime of Saddam Hussein, and because of what we'd seen
happen there over the years past.

Now, one other point that needs to be mentioned, with respect to
the scale of the problem we're addressing here. This is not just a
problem for the United States. Obviously, we aren't the only ones who
have been hit. And you think of all of the cities that have been
attacked since 9/11 -- you look at Madrid, and Casablanca, and Mombassa
in East Africa, and Riyadh, and Istanbul, and Jakarta, and Bali, and
Jakarta again, and Beslan in Southern Russia -- all of these attacks
with some kind of al Qaeda connection. It's a loose amorphous
organization. It's not a strong hierarchy, but what happened -- what
has happened over the years is that the al Qaeda has reached out to
say, Indonesia, to give you a good example. And in Indonesia there was
an Islamic fundamentalist group that had aspirations of taking down
their government, some of them were recruited, sent to Afghanistan,
went through the training camps in Afghanistan. A man named Hambali,
in particular, went through all of that. He then was given a sum of
money, and he went back to Indonesia where he then organized the
attacks on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, and on the resort out at Bali
where they killed some 200 Australians. He travels under the name of
-- Jemaah Islamiya is the name of his organization, not al Qaeda. But
it's an al Qaeda affiliate. It's almost like a franchise operation.
And that's the kind of situation we're having to deal with on a
worldwide basis. Al Qaeda means the base in Arabic. That's what it
stands for.

But the nature of the threat, that it is a global threat is
something that cannot be denied. It's also important for us to
recognize that this is a war. It's not a police action. It's not a
law enforcement problem. That's how we used to look at these things.
It's far more serious than that, and it requires the full commitment of
the resources of the United States to be able to win. And I think it
requires the kind of strong leadership that George Bush has provided to
be able to pull that.

The question on November 2nd, before the house is, is George Bush
the right man to take us forward for four more years, or is John Kerry
the guy? And of course, I have strong feelings on the subject.
(Laughter.) But I think it's important to look at John Kerry's record
in this regard because he obviously is out there campaigning saying,
I'm tough. I'll crush the terrorists. When he went to Boston, he got
up to the podium and said, reporting for duty and saluted smartly.
We're not questioning his patriotism. That's not the issue here. The
question is whether or not based on his record of public service, and
the positions he's taken on key issues over the years that relate to
the use of force and national security, national defense, based on how
he's handled these issues as a senator, what could we expect of him now
if he were to become the Commander-in-Chief?

And the thing I'm concerned about is I don't think there's anything
in his record that leads me to have any confidence that he could do
what needs to be done in terms of actively and aggressively pursuing
the war on terror and staying on offense. I look at everything from --
well, when he ran for Congress the first time in the '70s, he said the
U.S. should only deploy forces under the authorization of the United
Nations. 1984, when he ran for the Senate the first time, he ran on a
platform of cutting or eliminating most of the major weapons systems
that President Reagan had put together that were key to our support and
victory in the Cold War.

In 1993, after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, when he
was on the Senate intelligence committee, it looks as best we can tell
as though he didn't attend any meeting of the Senate intelligence
committee. And the year after the center -- the World Trade Center was
hit, and he did put forward an amendment recommending cutting billions
out of the intelligence budget. And it was so extreme that even Ted
Kennedy wouldn't support it. There's a long track record there. You
come down to 19991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, was poised to
dominate the Persian Gulf, when the Congress of the United States voted
to authorize former President Bush to use force, to expel the Iraqis
from Kuwait when we put together a coalition of 34 nations. We had the
blessing of the U.N. Security Council. Everything that Kerry
supposedly, you would think would want when talks about there having to
be some kind of global test before you use the U.S. forces, it was all
there, and he voted no. He was against going in the first time to get
rid of Saddam Hussein's presence in Kuwait. He voted against Desert
Storm.

It's a long track record that always consistently, I think, comes
down on the wrong side of that issue. Most recently, he was quoted in
The New York Times a week ago Sunday, in an interview he did with a
Times reporter who has been covering on the road, and sort of asked
about what his aspirations were in connection with the war on terror.
And he said, well, he hoped to be able to take it back to where
terrorism was only a nuisance, where it could be thought of and dealt
with -- and he used the analogy the way we deal with illegal gambling
or prostitution -- it was a problem to be managed at some acceptable
level was what was implied in his statement.

And I asked myself when I read that, I said, well, when was
terrorism ever just a nuisance? Certainly, you'd go back prior to 9/11
and ask, well, what about four years ago when the USS Cole was hit, off
Yemen, and we lost 17 sailors, they nearly sunk the ship? Or six years
ago when they hit simultaneously two of our embassies in East Africa
within minutes of each other, killed hundreds of people, including a
number of Americans? Or maybe it was back in the 1993, the first
attack on the World Trade Center in New York, killed six or seven, but
wounded a thousand, tried to take down a Trade Tower that day and
failed? Or maybe it was 1988, when Flight Pan Am 103 went down over
Lockerbie, Scotland after it was blown out of the skies? Or maybe
1983, in Beirut when that spring, they first blew up our embassy and
then later that fall a suicide bomber in a truck bomb drove into the
ground floor of the hotel where we had our Marines barracked, and
killed 241?

Now, none of those strike me as fitting the criteria of being a
nuisance. There has never been a time when we could think about terror
as a nuisance, and what has happened over the years, as we've dealt
with it primarily as -- strictly a law enforcement problem -- we can go
out and round up individuals and prosecute them and put them in jail,
when we didn't think of it as being at war, basically what the
terrorists did was learn that they could strike us with relative
impunity, and secondly that they could change our policy because they
did on a couple of occasions -- Mogadishu, 1993, when we lost 19
soldiers in the battle there, and within weeks, we pulled totally out
of Somalia; or even Beirut, 1983, after the bombing of the Marine
barracks, within months, we'd totally withdrawn from Lebanon. So they
could force us to do what they wanted to do through the application of
terror and intimidation, and by killing oftentimes innocent men, women,
and children -- sometimes military personnel.

I don't think it makes any sense if you're serious about
prosecuting the war on terror, if you're serious about defending the
nation, if you believe as I do and the President that the best defense
is a good offense, that you've got to go on offense and go after them
over there where they plot and train and plan so we don't have to fight
them here at home. Unless you've got that -- sort of got your mind
wrapped around those propositions, and believe, as we do, that it's far
better to deal with this threat now than it is to try to postpone it or
hope it goes away, that over time it may fade, it won't fade. We've
seen it steadily grow in severity to the point where we lost 3,000
Americans on 9/11. And time will only accrue to the benefit of the
terrorists. They'll gather strength. They'll develop more deadly
capabilities, maybe get their hands on a biological agent or a nuclear
weapon. So the way to deal with it is to deal with it, and to deal
with it aggressively, and to use the full force and might of the United
States to do that. And that's what we're doing. (Applause.)

Now, always -- it's important, I think, always to point out that
the President obviously has, I think, been exactly what we needed
during this period of time, in terms of his steadfastness, and his
leadership, and the way he's dealt with a very, very difficult set of
circumstances. But I also want to say that none of what we've done
would have been possible without the magnificent performance of the men
and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. They've just done a tremendous job
for all of us.

But with that, I'll stop. (Laughter.) I've rambled on long
enough. But we'd be happy to take your questions, and Lynne will be
happy to chime in every once in a while, I'm sure -- (Laughter.) So
don't be bashful about asking her, as well, too. But again, thank you
all for being here this morning. And as I say, that decision on
November 2nd is about as important as any I've ever been involved in,
and we are picking a Commander-in-Chief and someone who is going to see
us not just through the next four years, but I think help lay the
groundwork for that strategy that we've already put in place out there,
with the kind of set of decisions and propositions that will guide U.S.
foreign policy and defense policy maybe for the next 40 or 50 years.
It's that important.

Shelley?

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: Well, thank you. Do you have a
question?

Q This is just a total departure from what -- I guess the focus
of our discussion today. But like I said earlier when I introduced
myself, I am not only a local businessman, but I'm a farmer, I'm a
sportsman, and I also volunteer for Ducks Unlimited. And I would
personally like to thank you and the President both for your efforts
that you've made toward the wetlands conservation, or toward wetlands
conservation, especially the improvements that you've made in the
conservation provisions of the last farm bill. And I would be curious
as to what your thoughts are on the 2007 farm bill and how it will
affect both farmers and current land enrollments in both CRP and WRP.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the current statute expires I believe in
-- '07 I think is when we have to renew it. And it's always a battle
royal, without question. A major decision is to be made, and it will
depend a lot, clearly, on what happens with respect to the farm economy
over the course of the next three years before we get there. It will
also depend a lot I think on the assessment people make of how the
current bill is worked. Are there needs -- are there areas where we
need to tweak it, where we need to improve it?

My general impression is it has worked pretty well, that farm
income across the country is up, in many areas at an all-time record
high. The farm economy is a very important part of our total economy.
But I think that's a part of the economy that, on balance, has worked
very, very well.

We've got to look at, I suppose, individual crops and individual
provisions and see whether or not adjustments need to be made. But at
this point, I'm not aware that anybody has suggested any radical
changes in terms of moving off that legislation. It's important that
we continue -- we got to stay focused on the trade side of things, too,
with respect to agriculture, because I think one of every three acres
in the United States is -- we produce for export. And our agriculture
is so productive that we need to be able to sell a lot of that stuff
overseas, and that's what we've been doing, especially with China and
WTO and so forth and so on.

I'm optimistic that we'll be able to renew the Farm Act. As I say,
there may be some changes -- I'm not aware of any right now that
anybody is pitching or pushing.

Q I'm a legislative coordinator with West Virginia's Right for
Life. I welcome you to West Virginia, and let you know, and the
President know, that my family, as well as a lot of families across the
state pray for you daily for wisdom and for your protection. And we're
very proud of the job that you've been doing. Both of you have been
doing a fabulous job and I'm very proud of you. But as a pro-lifer, of
course, one of the things that I'm concerned about is the federal court
system. In 1996, West Virginia passed a ban on partial birth abortions
here overwhelmingly, with about 98 percent of our legislature voting
for that. Of course, that was struck down by the United States Supreme
Court. Of course, the President signed the federal ban and that is
through the court system now. And I know that the Democrats in the
Senate have kind of stymied your judicial appointments, and I wondered
what you think the prospects are in the next administration of having
some of the President's judicial appointees confirmed.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we -- with respect to the courts, we've
done fairly well at the federal district level. Where we've run into a
problem is with respect to appointments to the circuit courts. And
what the Democrats have done is, in effect, for the first time ever
mounted a filibuster as a major strategy and applied it to nominations
for the federal bench. And I would expect that they'll continue to try
to do that. What it means is we've got to have 60 votes to be able to
confirm some of those judges.

They've blocked some good ones. I think of a good friend of mine,
Bill Myers from Wyoming, who is an eminently well-qualified lawyer. He
used to work for Al Simpson, senator from Wyoming, a lot of people
remember -- a very talented and capable man who was appointed to the
Ninth Circuit on the West Coast and who's been blocked by the
filibuster. The Ninth Circuit is the one that handed down the ruling
saying that we should not be allowed to say "under God" when we pledge
allegiance. A lot of people thought that was an outrageous decision --
so did I -- which leads me to believe that that circuit could use some
new judges. (Laughter.) But they -- Bill Myers is a classic example
of that. But there have been others. Janice Rogers Brown, who is a
member of the California Supreme Court, first African American woman
appointed to the California Supreme Court, nominated by the President
for the Circuit Court of Appeals, filibustered and blocked by the
Democrats in the Senate. There's a long list.

The best thing we can do, frankly, is to elect more Democrats to
the United States -- or elect more Republicans to replace Democrats.
(Laughter.) And we're working hard on that this year. I've been out
spending a lot of time, and I -- it is important that the Senate
perform its constitutional responsibility. And we've got, as I say,
good nominees that are deemed well qualified by the bar, that have 54,
55, 56 votes for confirmation, which would clearly pass them under
normal circumstances, but their use -- resort to the filibuster has, in
fact, blocked some very talented and able people. And we just have to
keep working at it and pushing hard on them.

Q Thank you, sir, for taking my question. I have a concern
with the rising cost of college tuition. I think in our state,
state-supported schools, tuition went up 3 percent this past year,
again. And as the states lose money, or don't have the money, tuition
goes higher. And I'd like to know what the President's plan is to help
working families in America with the rising cost of college tuition?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there has been a lot of effort at the
federal level in terms of trying to improve the situation to help folks
finance college education. I'm a product of the state university in
Wyoming, and I was -- I went in the day when tuition was so cheap you
could work your way through, it was 96 bucks a semester or something.
(Laughter.) But I was only making --

MRS. CHENEY: That long ago, huh? (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: But I was only making about a buck and a
quarter an hour, so -- but some of the things the President has done,
we've moved aggressively, for example, on the whole Pell grant
program. We've added -- gone from about 4 million people eligible to
participate in that to about 5 million now. We've increased the amount
of the individual grant by some $300 a year to try to help offset the
rising cost of colleges out there, as well, too.

The President also came up with another idea that we've got out
there that will allow an extra -- leave an extra thousand dollars a
year for students -- low-income students who take accelerated courses
in high school to prepare themselves for college, an incentive for
people to take advantage of that. So there's a lot of effort underway
to deal with that, and obviously, we try to deal with it, as well,
through tax cuts -- when they go across the board with rate reductions,
allow people to keep more of what they earn, so they can spend it as
they see fit, rather than send it off to Washington.

Finally, we are pushing the concept of what's called lifetime
savings accounts, allow people to save tax-free for various and sundry
purposes, one of which would be education. They'd be able to set money
aside and it would accrue money -- accrue value tax-free and could be
taken out for those purposes to pay for education, college education --
so a number of ways we are trying to help. We recognize the enormous
importance -- if you look at the -- I saw a study the other day that
showed that some 83 percent of the fastest growing areas for new jobs
in the country in terms of economic types of activities, about 83
percent of them require some training beyond high school. And you just
-- if you're going to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities
that this nation has, and if we're going to have the kind of work force
that will guarantee we'll stay number one in the world in terms of our
economic performance, and being able to create and fill good jobs here
at home, then education training is absolutely the heart of it -- and
not just from K through 12, obviously, but beyond high school.

MRS. CHENEY: Could I just add one thing? Which is a lot of the
high cost of college reflects the lack of fairness, it's -- so many
kids now don't get through in four years because they have to spend
time taking remedial courses that first year --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Be careful what you say now about --
(Laughter.)

MRS. CHENEY: But the President's plan to take the idea of
accountability, high standards from elementary school to high school,
which he plans to do in the next four years -- I think No Child Left
Behind is already showing that it's an effective plan for improving --
making our elementary schools the best in the world. Moving forward
with that to high school, I think will help with the college crisis
because it will give kids

the preparation they need to go to college so they don't have to
spend their first year taking remedial math, their first year there
taking remedial English. That has reached crisis proportions around
the country: kids going to college who really aren't prepared as well
as they should have been by the secondary school system. So that's
another one.

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: Excellent, excellent point. Thank
you.

Q I just want to say it's a real honor to meet you and be able
to ask you a question. Something that is affecting everyone is high
gas prices, and my question is concerning the President's energy plan
-- twofold: can you explain how West Virginia coal fits into the
administration's energy plan; and also what are the prospects of that
being passed and actually to get that going?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the energy area is one that needs to be
addressed. We've been working on it since, well, the first week we
were in office, back when we had rolling brownout in California, and
serious problems both in terms of natural gas prices, as well as
concerns about the availability of petroleum and petroleum products and
so forth.

The President had me put together a task force of administration
officials. We put together a report, had 106 different recommendations
in it. And we went forward with those that we could move
administratively, and then we introduced legislation into the Congress
that was designed to deal with the rest of it. And that legislation
now has gotten through the House at least twice, and been blocked in
the Senate. The last time around having passed the House in the form
of a conference agreement, gone back to the Senate -- we had the 58
votes, but again it was filibustered, came up two votes short -- and
two of those votes were John Kerry and John Edwards who didn't show up
that day. I'm not sure if they had, they'd have voted with it anyway.
But in terms of the -- of what needs to be done, you start with the
principle that you absolutely have to have to access to affordable
energy, and abundant supplies of it to run an economy like ours. And
we're far more efficient consumers of energy than we used to be. You
can look at the amount of energy we consume per unit of output in our
economy, and it has gone down steadily over the years because we've
gotten to be a lot more efficient in terms of how we use it. But you
still need to produce more energy for a growing, booming economy.

And coal is extraordinarily important because it accounts for over
half of our electric generating capacity in this country. One of the
problems -- remember the President has taken some heat for saying he
wouldn't support the Kyoto treaty -- the Kyoto treaty was going to
establish mandatory caps on certain types of emissions on global
basis. If it had been put in place, it was estimated by the Wharton
School up in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia that it would have pretty
well shut down all coal-burning facilities in the U.S. by the year
2020. There's a little problem if you're going to shut down, for
example, all your electric generating capacity. It makes no sense at
all. It would have cost as much as $400 billion a year out of our
economy, the estimates of the Energy Information Administration of DOE;
and about 4.9 million jobs. Wrong way to go. We think it's much more
effective to rely on technology to find ways to deal with our
environmental problems. The President has funded -- made a very hefty
commitment to clean coal technology. Shelley has been heavily involved
in that. She's one of the big advocates of it. And we have spent
about $1.4 billion, I think, already during the three years we've been
here to find ways to burn coal more cleanly so that you don't have any
environmental consequences. And we're making significant progress.

We've, in fact, if you look at our total -- another set of
statistics for you, over the last 20 years, if you look at the
emissions of the six main pollutants that people are concerned about,
over the last 20-year period of time, we've cut those emissions by
about 50 percent, at the same time the economy has grown by 164
percent. It just gives you another example the extent to which we're
doing it better and smarter and wiser all the time.

In terms of our natural gas, there's an area there that we badly
need more natural gas supplied to this country. It is in great demand
as a fuel for generating electricity as well as a lot of other
purposes, too. It's a basic feedstock for chemicals industry. Natural
gas now costs about $6 to $7 per MCF, per thousand cubic feet, and we
don't have enough of it. One of the things our energy bill does is to
authorize and provide some loan guarantees to build a natural gas
pipeline from the North Slope of Alaska down to the Lower 48. There's
already a pipeline from the North Slope to the Lower 48 -- well, to
Valdez, moving oil. And this would be a parallel line that would be
for natural gas. We produce vast quantities of natural gas up there on
the North Slope. It comes out of the ground with the oil we're pumping
anyway, but we have to re-inject it back into the ground because
there's no way to get it to market. Well, this is one way to get it to
market to the Lower 48, where we could use it.

With respect to gasoline and petroleum products, the problem we've
got there is that we're at maximum capacity in terms of our
refineries. We haven't built a new refinery in this country in close
to 30 years. One way to deal with that -- people don't build
refineries because it's so hard to get the permits to do so. One way
to deal with that is the new source review regulations at EPA. And
we've put in place new regulations. They're now challenged in court.
That's going to have to be fought out in the courts. It will make it
easier to expand existing refineries to add to capacity there, as well,
too. But when you're running flat-out at 98 percent, 99 percent
capacity, and you're not building any new refineries and demand is
going up, and you end up having to import more and more of you product,
and we're more and more dependent on foreign sources. And that means
we're right up against with respect to price. There's -- we estimate
-- a million barrels a day on -- in ANWR, and the North Slope of Alaska
that we -- again, we got it through the House, couldn't get it through
the Senate. So we'll keep pushing. It's going to be a priority for us
in the second term. A couple more votes in the Senate would spring
loose, I think, a very important piece of energy legislation. There's
a lot more renewable sources of energy. Ethanol and biodiesel, R&D on
hydrogen fuels and so forth, new technologies -- we need to do it all
to make sure we've got adequate supplies of energy over the long haul.

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: Well, I'm getting the high sign that
we have time for one more question. But if we get two quick ones, but
I have four people --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'll give short answers, I'll give short
answers.

Q Okay, my quick one -- I won't go to my other one then, can
you give us some of your folks' plans on Social Security? I'm in that
realm at the moment.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, we're at the point -- this happens in
every election I've been in since 1978. It was the first time I ran
for Congress and I did that six times, and then I've been involved in
-- I was involved in President Ford's presidential campaign before
that, and a couple of presidential campaigns since. When we get about
to this stage of the campaign, our opponents, as they are now, start to
say, oh, the Republicans are going to do something to --

Q They'll steal Social Security.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Exactly. It's an age-old cry. It's usually a
good sign when it happens because it means they're behind. (Laughter.)
And so they start -- with all due respect, I think John Kerry has
proven pretty decisively that he'll say virtually anything to get
elected. And the latest in the last couple of days is this notion that
somehow we're going to do something damaging to Social Security.
Absolutely not true. The President made it very clear, we all have,
that Social Security is in good shape for the generation currently
receiving Social Security benefits. The funds are there to cover
them. For those who expect to retire in the not-too-distant future,
it's in good shape for them. The folks that we need to worry about are
my kids in their 30s, and people younger than that, who have got
legitimate questions about whether or not there will anything left of
the Social Security trust fund when they get to point where they're
eligible for retirement benefits. And there is a problem down the road
in terms of need to deal with what will be a gap between the benefits
that have been promised, and we know how many people are going to
retire, and how much money is going to be in the fund.

What the President has talked about doing, and we think it makes
good sense is to offer an operation to that younger generation -- it
wouldn't have any effect on those currently drawing benefits, or those
expecting to draw benefits in the not-too-distant future, but for
somebody in their 20s, to give them to option of saying, if you want --
you don't have to -- but if you want, you'd be allowed to take a
portion of your payroll tax and invest in a personal retirement
account.

Q On your own.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: On your own. It would have to be approve,
obviously. But you could earn a higher rate of return than you'll get
through the Social Security system. It's one way to help begin to
close the income gap, if you will, on the revenue gap between what is
being collected and what will have to be paid out 40, 50 years down the
road. But it also gives the individual more control over their own
lives. It's their -- becomes their personal retirement account, just
like a 401k, in effect. And we think it has merit. It's just an idea
at this point. But it's one of those things that we think we need to
begin to address and think about innovative ways of dealing with this
problem. Because it will have a big impact, as I say, on the
20-somethings. But none of this is going to have any impact at all,
nor does anybody who is currently drawing Social Security benefits, or
planning on drawing Social Security benefits need to have any concern
that somehow somebody is going to do something to damage the Social
Security system. Ain't going to happen.

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: It's up to you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, let's do one more.

Q Thanks for involving all of us. Two questions, one it's
unfortunate that we have a big shortage of the flu vaccine, but how are
we going to make it affordable to get the antiviral for the elderly?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the problem we've run into is producing
vaccine is not a very profitable business. We're down now, I guess, to
two producers. And it's a combination of the economics of the
business. You can produce millions of doses, but if people don't take
it, then you have to throw it out because it's only good for one year,
and then it has to be renewed, so it's not necessarily a very
profitable business for companies to be in.

The other big problem we've got, frankly, is liability concerns.
And again we've tried to get approval through the Congress. Shelley
has been involved with some of this -- we got it through the House, as
I recall; we didn't get it through the Senate -- that would have capped
non-economic damages, the medical liability system that would also, as
I recall, have protected manufacturers of vaccine against excessive
punitive damage awards if the FDA had approved the vaccine. And that
failed in the Senate, and it was opposed by Senator Kerry and Senator
Edwards. You come back to this area, in particular, we obviously are
going to have to spend -- I think deal with medical liability reform
before we'll find people willing to step up and take the risk of
producing these kinds of products for the U.S. market. And it affects
not only medicine.

The other day I was in northern Minnesota -- there's a company
there didn't even exist 20 years ago. And this start-up -- two
brothers started the company. It's now the second biggest producer of
piston-driven airplanes in the United States, got 900 employees, great
company, very successful. He said if it weren't for what he was having
to pay in product liability insurance because of the threat of the
trial lawyers, he could hire another 200 people. But that's the
litigation cost that, in effect, is built into his business, that is
getting siphoned off.

And of course, in the much broader area of medicine, and the OB/GYN
-- I just got a letter the other day.

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: Her husband is an OB/GYN.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Then you know all the problems. I'm not
telling you anything you don't know about. I think we've lost one out
of four OB/GYN in my home state of Wyoming because of the cost, the
rising cost of malpractice insurance. People in parts of the state now
have to drive a hundred miles over to South Dakota to find a doctor who
can provide adequate care when they're expecting a child. The main
insurers have pulled out because it has just gotten too expensive for
them to provide it -- can't get new docs to come into the state, and
the ones that are there are having a tough time staying in business
given what has happened because in Wyoming, at least up until now,
there's a provision on the ballot in November, but until now hasn't
been willing to cap and reform the trial lawyer -- the tort system, the
medical malpractice system. So it's a big priority for us. We've
gotten it through the House, not yet through the Senate, but we'll keep
pushing it. Again, it's one of those areas where given John Edwards
background, and John Kerry's past voting record, you're not going to
see serious medical liability reform as long as the two of them are in
business.

CONGRESSWOMAN MOORE CAPITO: Well, thank you, Mrs. Cheney, and Mr.
Vice President. And to Rita and James, next time you guys next to ask
the first question. I apologize that we didn't get to your questions.
But I can't thank you enough for coming and giving us the intimacy of
being able to ask you any question we would care to, and for your
frankness in your answers.

We're so very proud of you and your service. I, as somebody who
campaigns quite a bit, I'm amazed at your energy level. I don't know
how you do it. But I appreciate it, and I know it's a sacrifice for
you as a family. And I want you to know, as West Virginians, that we
truly, truly appreciate it.

So thank you. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We appreciate that very much, Shelley. And we
very much look forward to having West Virginia once again in the
Bush-Cheney column. (Applause.)